Constitutional FAQ Answer #159

Q159. "Wikipedia says 'The Electoral College
elected Washington unanimously in 1789, and again in the 1792 election; he
remains the only president to receive 100% of electoral votes.' Yet your
Electoral College pages for thoseyears show that other people got electoral votes. Can
you explain the discrepancy?

A. The electoral college can be divided into two parts — the pre-12th Amendment part and the post-12th Amendment
part. Before the 12th Amendment was passed, the members of the college cast two
ballots for president. They had to be for different people, and at least one
had to be from a different state than the elector. The winner was the person
with the most votes, and the vice president was the person with the second most
votes.

In the electoral college of 1788, every single elector voted for George
Washington on one of their ballots. There were eleven other vote-getters, with
John Adams garnering the most of the second ballots. This is seen as a
unanimous vote for Washington, then, because every elector voted for him
— there were 69 electors, and Washington got 69 votes. The other 69 votes
were scattered among the other eleven.

The same thing essentially happened in the 1792 electoral vote. There were
132 electors, and 132 votes for Washington. Adams got the bulk of the second
ballots, sharing them with three other men.

In no other pre-12th Amendment election did anyone get a vote from all of
the electors. In the post-12th Amendment world, where separate ballots for the
president and vice president are cast, there has never been an election where
any person received every single vote cast. The closest anyone has come in the
modern era is in 1936, when Franklin Roosevelt got 98.49% of the electoral
votes.